


Tiger on a Chain

by marlowe_tops



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Knotting, M/M, Master/Slave, Power Play, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-06 13:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlowe_tops/pseuds/marlowe_tops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alpha Sebastian is a prisoner of war, thrown into the gladiatorial rings where he catches the eye of the omega emperor and becomes a pet. But he is the most deadly sort of pet, absolutely capable of biting the hand that feeds him, only to learn that betrayal--and possession--goes both ways. The most dangerous men in two nations play a game of power and lust, at the risk of destroying both nations and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an omega!verse story. If you're not familiar with the kink, best inform yourself before proceeding:  
> http://fanlore.org/wiki/Alpha/Beta/Omega
> 
> There will be references to mpreg, but it is not a significant part of the story.
> 
> The two countries referenced in this vaguely science fiction AU, Delos and Naxos, are my own invention. Feel free to use the world or the concept in your own fic if it strikes your fancy.
> 
> -
> 
> My eternal gratitude to Melanie, who let me commandeer her services as a beta reader.

The stadium stank of blood.  
  
Sebastian padded barefoot out onto the sand, hot under the searing bright lights that dangled from the ceiling. The crowd roared in greeting, as his face flashed across the vid screens tall as buildings on either side of the arena. He was the crowd favorite in the Emperor’s arena.  
  
He ignored this. They’d made him a slave, thrown him in the fighting rings, and let him claw his way up through the ranks. Alphas entered the fighting rings as slaves, and left them either dead or purchased to be some noble’s plaything.   
  
He knew there had already been offers for him. Rich, fat, stinking nobility from this unnatural country of Delos, where the omegas ruled and the alphas fought for the pleasure of serving them. He knew they had already begun vying for his purchase price, but some long-forgotten emperor had written a law that only the emperor could claim the victor of a fight--any fight. It was only fair, to keep the best fighters from being hawked away while they were still in the lower ranks, and to ensure that the alphas who made it to the emperor’s stadium were the best and most brutal.  
  
Sebastian was happy to help them with that. He would fight anything they put in front of him, regardless of gender or nationality. If it fought back, all the better. If winning kept him from being snatched up as a kept stud for some fat noble, he would fight with everything he had, until the day came that he lost, or if he had the bad luck to catch the eye of the emperor himself.  
  
The opponent who appeared on the far side of the arena was tall and skinny, a few inches taller than Sebastian and all whipcord muscle. Sebastian circled, taking his measure. Most of his opponents at the higher levels had been big guys. There were no weight categories in these fighting rings, so the big fighters had the advantage. Whether their size came from fat or muscle, they didn’t need skill to hit like a tank. But they still went down quick enough when Sebastian got a shot at them.  
  
This one, however, was scrawny. Scars criss-crossed his body, far more than Sebastian’s trophy display of scars, and he moved fast, with a glint of madness in his eye. Sebastian found himself grinning.  _Finally_ , a challenge.  
  
Setting his stance low, Sebastian circled, drawing his enemy in. He was another alpha, but that hardly mattered. Sebastian’s feelings of loyalty carried very little weight compared to his desire to win.   
  
The punches that flew at him were deadly fast. This fight was going to  _hurt_ . But there was a reckless edge to that speed. His opponent had a death wish, even worse than Sebastian’s. He could use this man’s recklessness and madness against him. Now was no time to show off. Choosing a defensive technique, Sebastian stuck to his basics. The basics would keep him safe, while his enemy got more and more reckless. He could wait. An opening would come.  
  
All around them, the audience roared for blood. They thought Sebastian was losing, the fools. He was constantly on the retreat, only landing the occasional hit, but this fight was still his.   
  
As the fight dragged on, they were both bleeding. Sebastian ached from a pair of broken ribs, and his right hand was throbbing, but he fought just fine when he led southpaw, and it seemed to rattle his enemy when he did. By the last round, he could barely stand, but the taller alpha was staggering. One of those scar-crossed eyes was swollen shut and he turned his head too quickly side to side--some of the blows Sebastian had landed had damaged his hearing.  
  
Dredging up the reserves of energy that he’d hoarded through the earlier rounds, Sebastian pounded through those shaky defenses, landing blow after blow. When the whipcord alpha hit the sand, bleeding out under the stadium lights, he didn’t even try to stand.  
  
Sebastian turned his back. Let him die, or let them carry him out on a stretcher. He didn’t care.   
  
The roar from the audience was deafening, but Sebastian ignored that, too. Taking his pain with him as the only trophy he needed, he walked back to the little door that had let him in to the ring. He’d won. That was enough. They would leave him alone until there was another fight. Another anonymous alpha for Sebastian to maim, or maybe kill.  
  
Except that they didn’t leave him alone. There were new guards waiting for him, escorting him to a cold, clinical room where his cuts were cleaned and stitched, and they strapped him down to a table where some silver machine sent torturous shocks through him. Sebastian cursed them in every language he knew, but when the machine turned off and his bonds released, his ribs felt only bruised, no longer broken.  
  
Still growling, he was herded into a shower room. The water was frigid, but it was still enough of a luxury that Sebastian took the opportunity without argument, and dressed gladly in the clean black slacks they brought him. He lashed out when they brought the chains for his wrists and a leash for his throat, and managed to bloody a guard’s face before the shocks through his slave collar subdued him.  
  
His guards were silent throughout these processes. Sebastian considered asking them what was going on, why his treatment had changed, and where they were taking him, but decided he didn’t want to know. The options were few, and he would find out soon enough. Likely that his guards wouldn’t answer, and Sebastian preferred to keep his pride and not ask.  
  
An enclosed silver transport waited outside, where there were new guards, just as talkative as the last ones. Betas, all of them. Useless, mundane betas.  
  
By the time he got to the palace, Sebastian suspected where he was going. Had to be the emperor, or one of his favorites. He had been bought. The slave collar around his neck tingled, and Sebastian snarled at the gawping courtiers in the hallway as he was prodded along. Now he regretted not killing his enemy in the arena. He wanted  _somebody_ to die for this.  
  
They brought him to a throne room, where the omega nobility chattered and stared at his approach. He bared his teeth at them. Mewling whores who didn’t know their place. How dared they chain  _him_ , an alpha, their natural superior in every way.  
  
And at the center, on the throne, wearing a tilted crown and a smirk, was the emperor of the omegas (that was the start of any number of dirty jokes, in Sebastian’s homeland of Naxos). Dark-haired and slender, with eyes as empty as the void, he wore his finery with a wanton nonchalance.  
  
“A whore in a crown,” Sebastian said, with a laugh, because he had never, ever known his place, and never been able to keep his damn mouth shut. Not in Naxos, when he was outranked by other alphas, and not as a prisoner of war, when it could have meant his life. His nostrils flared, blatantly scenting the omega, although the pheremones mixed and muddled in this crowded hall, and he couldn’t pick out which one belonged to the bitch on the throne.  
  
“We were impressed by your fight,” the emperor tittered. “Very brutal.”  
  
“I’m so glad I passed the test to be your stud. Do tell me who I’ll be fucking.”  
  
“Oh, you’ve got a  _mouth_ on you,” the emperor drawled. “Cute. I hear they call you the Tiger. Well, kitten, I don’t want a stud. I want a pet. Try not to be boring.” He made a sharp gesture with one hand, and the guards hauled Sebastian forward by his chains, linking the leash on his collar to a metal ring set into the floor to one side of the dias. The length of it left him just out of reach of the throne, even if he strained, and the courtiers cleverly stayed out of reach. He obviously wasn’t the first of the emperor’s pets with an attitude problem.  
  
“What happened to the last one?” Sebastian asked, although he’d very clearly been dismissed from the emperor’s attention.  
  
“I had him skinned,” was the response, with a psychotic smile.   
  
The emperor of the omegas was mad. Completely and utterly insane. Sebastian started to laugh, and then couldn’t stop. This goddamn country. Omegas in charge, half of them nutters, and for some reason military strategy seemed to come like second nature to the bitches.  
  
And they ignored him. The most deadly alpha in their stinking little country, who had just an hour before had the rapt attention of the entire city, and now he was chained like a dog at the foot of their throne and  _ignored_ .  
  
Court went on around him, a mix of inane chatter about gossip and entertainment around the edges, and the business of court that the emperor conducted meanwhile. Bored within minutes, Sebastian sprawled on the steps of the dias. As long as they were all going to ignore him, they could just go to hell while he took a nap.  
  
He was woken up when the court dispersed, and chained up in a windowless cell down the hall from the emperor’s room. Sebastian couldn’t be bothered to complain. It was clean, and the mattress was the thickest he had slept on in months. Being ignored was just fine with him. It was considerably better than being expected to provide entertainment, or to pleasure some sagging omega past his prime.  
  
Midway through the second day, he actually heard the emperor’s name, in amongst the swaddling of titles that these courtiers padded around every sentence. James Moriarty. Killed his predecessor and took the throne. Sebastian didn’t judge on that count. Heirarchy by cleverness wasn’t so different from the heirarchy of strength back home, and anyone who could be outwitted or outmatched clearly didn’t deserve to rule.   
  
They continued to ignore him.   
  
He was a trophy, a mere ornament for the emperor’s court. From what he could gather, the emperor always had an alpha trophy at hand, and Sebastian had just had the bad luck to have come to his attention when he was in need of a replacement. But sooner or later the emperor would go into heat, just like any other omega, and he would need an alpha around to take care of that.   
  
Sebastian didn’t mind so much. At least Moriarty was young and pretty. And until then, he could nap.  
  
Court was achingly boring. There were petty disputes brought before the emperor for judgement and simpering ploys performed by the courtiers for favor. Meals were much the same, although there was often entertainment present, in the form of musicians or dancers. Only the war councils held the potential to be interesting, and he was banished from those, left to wait in the hallway and snarl at his guards like a feral cat. Moriarty never once addressed Sebastian, only indicating by a hand gesture to the guards whether he wished his pet brought along.  
  
It was two days before Moriarty paid the first hint of attention to him since he’d been chained to the dias.   
  
A troupe of wrestlers came to perform for the court. All betas, but apparently they’d won some sort of awards out in a backwater province for their training. Moriarty picked two of them at random to compete for his amusement.  
  
They were talented, tumbling swiftly over each other in a variety of holds. The two he had picked seemed very equally matched, constantly pinning each other and then slipping from the hold with a new twist. But Sebastian watched with a fighter’s eyes, and noticed that there were far too many openings left ignored, which their apparent level of skill should easily have exploited. But instead, they always went for the more flourishing move.   
  
He laughed. “It’s choreographed.”  
  
Moriarty held up a hand and the court went still. “Admirable,” he said to the wrestling trainer, as though he hadn’t heard Sebastian’s comment. “Aren’t they ever so amusing. And at this level of training, surely you don’t mind a demonstration against my pet? He’s a mere boxer.” His eyes flicked over to Sebastian, measuring. Sebastian got the immediate impression that if he was wrong, he was going to be in a world of pain. “But it amuses him to think he knows something about wrestling. I’m certain you can prove him wrong.”  
  
And if he was right, the wrestling troupe was going to die.  
  
Well, at least this was a break in the doldrums of his life. A guard unlocked Sebastian’s chains, and he took the opportunity to stretch his arms and shoulders, growling to himself. Barefoot and shirtless, the way he’d come to the court and the way it pleased Moriarty to keep him, he stepped into the makeshift wrestling ring.   
  
The emperor was right--he  _didn’t_ know wrestling. He’d always done better with his fists. But no one expected purity of style from him. Just fight without throwing punches, right?   
  
He let his opponent come at him, deflecting his grip and knocking him aside, with a modified street-fighting technique that seemed like the best choice here. The wrestler was smaller than Sebastian, so he used that to his advantage, keeping a rock-solid stance against his attempts to topple and then slipping cat-like out of his grasp.  
  
It was an odd fight, both of them off-kilter from unfamiliar styles, but Sebastian had just spent the past twenty minutes analyzing this idiot’s wrestling, whereas the wrestler had no idea what to expect. He toyed with him as they struggled, learning some of the techniques and turning them back against his enemy with a new twist. It didn’t take long for Sebastian to get one step ahead of him, making him look like a fool by being constantly just out of reach and slipping easily out of his holds.   
  
The instant Sebastian managed to get two steps ahead of him, he was behind the wrestler, an arm around his neck. The dull snap of his spine breaking was deafening in the silent throne room.  
  
Triumphant, Sebastian let the body drop, pacing back to his spot at the foot of the dias and sprawling there, waiting to see what would become of the losers. He could feel the emperor’s gaze on him, pleased to have his full attention where it belonged.  
  
After a very long pause, Moriarty’s eyes returned back to the wrestlers who had  _dared_ to present a dumbshow as a combat. “Boil them,” he hissed.  
  
Sebastian grinned.


	2. Chapter 2

Another day of mind-numbing boredom passed. The high point of the day was a long-winded nobleman who had come to the emperor to settle a dispute between his two sons. The grown sons had begun quarreling over their inheritance, and playing a messy game of one-upmanship that was enraging all the neighbors. It was a maddeningly dull case, where everyone involved had their own side to tell and thought that they’d been wronged, and Sebastian wanted to strangle the lot of them.

This was what happened when you let omegas own land. They spent their entire lives whining and bickering over it.

After almost half an hour spent on the same case, Sebastian’s patience was frayed. “If you’re such a piss-poor father that you’ve allowed your sons this far out of control,” he snapped, “why not take responsibility for which one of them should die for the offense? Sounds to me like that would solve everyone’s problems.”

The court stared at him in horror.

Moriarty giggled.

“That sounds fair,” the emperor declared. “You heard my kitten. Your sons have been wrecking the peace of my kingdom. As your punishment and to settle this dispute, you may choose which of them will die.”

Voice tight with dread, the nobleman begged and pleaded with the emperor to have mercy and reconsider. Foolishly, Sebastian knew. He should have known that leaving with one son was the mercy.

Moriarty flicked a finger toward Sebastian, signaling a guard. Sebastian knew that signal. His chains dropped away while the nobleman was still begging, too stupid to understand the significance of Sebastian’s release.

Lifting a dagger off the guardsman who released him, before anyone but Sebastian and the emperor could figure out what was going on, Sebastian took the three strides to the nearer of the two sons, and drove the dagger through his eyeball and into his brain. The youth fell, twitching as he died. Stepping around his screeching father, Sebastian opened the jugular veins of the second son without cutting his throat. He dropped the bloody dagger at the father’s feet, walked to the front of the dias, and knelt.

The court went into an uproar.

Moriarty applauded.

After that, the chains stayed off Sebastian’s wrists, but the chain on his collar remained. Moriarty ruled his court with frightening intelligence, ferreting out lies and masterminding solutions with ease, but it amused him sometimes to turn to Sebastian on questions of justice. Sebastian’s sense of justice was brutal, but they both enjoyed putting someone’s life in Sebastian’s hands and letting the alpha kill.

By the end of his first day, Sebastian could pick Moriarty’s scent out of the rest of the court. Now and again, when he was being escorted from one place to another, he strained at his chains, nostrils flared with the desire to mate. Moriarty was the only omega in the court who even slightly interested him, and on the rare occasions he walked within five feet of Sebastian, the urge to possess him was overwhelming. Twice he hit the end of his chain and nearly choked himself in a just-slightly-miscalculated lunge to grab him.

Moriarty laughed the first time this happened. “Alphas,” he sneered. “Barbarian dogs.”

The second time it happened, Sebastian realized that Moriarty’s sense of distance was very slightly better than his own, and did not humiliate himself with a third attempt.

Days turned into weeks, and despite Sebastian’s senses remaining on constant alert for his owner’s scent, there was no hint of heat approaching. Bored and frustrated with his life, he made elaborate escape plans in his head, mapping them out in detail, but there was always some tiny but crucial thing that ruined each plan. The palace had no stricter security than any other place he had been, it was just deployed so cleverly as to be nearly airtight.

“What do you mean _escaped?_ ” Moriarty hissed, with such venom that Sebastian lifted his head from his latest escape strategy and started actually paying attention to what was going on in the throne room around him. There was a small array of guilt-stricken men in front of Moriarty, all of them squirming to avoid taking the blame for whatever had gone wrong. “Which one?”

“The red-haired alpha you’d meant as a gift for Lord Trevor. He managed to remove his collar without electrocuting himself. We’re still trying to work out how.”

“So you’re telling me that you lost a very valuable alpha, who could be anywhere, with no way to track him? Does anyone have any good news? ANYONE?”

Sebastian sat forward, intrigued. “I can track him.”

Moriarty’s head whipped around. “Say that again, _pet_.”

Meeting his eyes without a hint of fear, Sebastian repeated himself more slowly, emphasizing each word. “I can track him.”

“How?”

“I was in your damn Delian fighting rings. I saw the underbelly of your civilization, and I’m smart enough to know how to navigate it. Where one escaped Naxian alpha can go, another can follow. Leave my collar on if you’re worried,” Sebastian said. “You can track me, and depending on who asks I’ll claim it’s a deactivated fake.”

“We’re supposed to let you walk out of here,” one of Moriarty’s favored nobles sneered, “so that you can figure out how to cut your own collar and escape? Only a fool would agree to that.”

Sebastian turned cold eyes on the noble, debating whether or not Moriarty would have him castrated if he found a way to slaughter the whiny omega. The nobleman squirmed under his gaze.

“I don’t know,” Jim said, rising from his throne and walking toward Sebastian. “It could be an interesting test.”

Sebastian didn’t lunge for him, knew better than to lunge for him, until Jim was standing right in front of him and he _pounced_ , mouth sealing over Jim’s in a possessive kiss. His bitch, his omega, _finally_. And Jim returned the kiss, which was even better, in front of the whole court.

Except that suddenly guards were there, hauling him away, and cold electricity shocked through his collar, dropping him to his knees with a growl of rage.

His Jim. His omega. _Get back here._

Panting, Sebastian watched Jim wipe his mouth and return to his throne, lounging back as if nothing important had happened. Eyes dark with rage and lust, Sebastian struggled against the grip of his guards on his shoulders, far too aroused to have any logical idea what that kiss was supposed to prove.

“Turn him out of the palace,” Moriarty ordered, with a flick of his fingers. “He can find his own way back once he’s brought me my prize.”

Brain short-circuiting as Sebastian processed being kissed and being thrown out, he didn’t start thinking clearly again until he was out a side door and free.

Sort-of free. The slave collar around his neck was equipped with a tracking device. It was true, he _could_ track down the escaped slave, or just about anyone else in the crime world, and find out how to remove it, but something about the way Jim had said _test_ made that seem like a trap.

If the palace’s defenses really were inescapable, Moriarty was the one who had masterminded them that way, and it was well within his power to mastermind a trap around this, even if it had been Sebastian’s idea and spur of the moment.

Best not to stand about like an idiot. Sebastian started moving, wishing that someone had given him shoes or a shirt before chucking him out the side door. He kept to the side alleys and kept moving. As long as he looked like he was on someone’s business, the collar--and Sebastian’s natural aura of _get out of my face or I will rip your eyes out_ \--would keep anyone from questioning him.

Before he was out of sight of the palace, he started a fight in a back alley, won, and took the loser’s shirt and shoes as his prize.

Back home in Naxos, where alphas were the ruling class, Sebastian had been born a nobody. And like any other alpha who wasn’t born into money, he went into the military, where they trained him in every possible way to kill, and then made him a colonel and sent him to war. He had always been privileged, if only by nature of his gender. Any beta or omega would obey an alpha, even without rank.

So this was a new and unpleasant world. He had no rights, and if his lies failed him for a minute, he would find himself dragged back to the palace as a supposed escaped slave. If he came back empty-handed, would Jim kill him, or merely ignore him again as a useless, boring failure? Better not to find out.

It took him the rest of the day and multiple close calls to find some useful connections. An alpha in this world could only trust other alphas, and most of those were born and bred slaves. Finding alphas who had been prisoners of war took some doing, and finding those who could actually help him was even harder.

Four days of murder, coercion and lies finally got him to the alpha he was looking for, in a tiny garret room above the filthiest pub in the city.

“I hear you’re looking for me,” the redhead said, lounging idly on a grungy pallet.

“You hear right,” Sebastian said, palming his stolen knife and walking over to lean over his prey. “You have any idea who I am?”

“No,” the alpha grunted, uninterested, but then his eyes narrowed. “Yes. You’re the emperor’s bitch.”

Without even a beat, Sebastian slashed the knife across his face for that offense, a centimeter beneath his eyes. “Half right.”

Yelling, the alpha leapt to his feet, swinging a punch at Sebastian. It was easily dodged--he was no brawler, and Sebastian swung him a left hook to try and help him realize that.

“What the _fuck?_ ” his victim snapped, retreating and taking a defensive stance.

“How did you deactivate your collar?” Sebastian asked.

“Piss off.”

Sebastian slashed his knife down across one of the defending arms, the gush of blood that resulted painting both of them red. “How did you deactivate your collar?”

“You’re insane,” the alpha said, groping around for a weapon of any sort.

“How did you deactivate your collar?”

Grabbing a chair, the red-haired alpha swung it at him. Sebastian moved with the impact as it hit him, ripping it from his opponent’s arms and throwing it out of his way. Three quick hits and one cut and Sebastian had him yelping, and it only took a moment after that to get his prey on the floor with a knife at his throat, pinning him down with Sebastian’s knees on his shoulders.

“How did you deactivate your collar?” Sebastian repeated.

“Yellow wire,” he gasped. “Cut the yellow wire and jolt electricity through it to fry the system.”

Keeping the knife on him, Sebastian checked the collar he was still wearing to verify his story. At one of the joints in the collar, there were a few exposed wires--one of them was coated yellow, cut, and fried at the ends.

“Thanks,” he said, cutting the other alpha’s throat.

It took him fifteen minutes of work with the knife and a considerable amount of blood and determination to saw the head from the body.

Soaked in blood and carrying a severed head in one hand, his trophy’s slave collar and his stolen knife in the other, Sebastian walked downstairs, ignoring the open-mouthed gaping from everyone he passed. He got half a block down the street before he was surrounded by heavily-armed police on all sides.

“I am Sebastian Moran,” he said, eyes daring any of them to make a move. “I belong to Emperor Moriarty. I will be returning to him now. You are _welcome_ to escort me.”

There was some flurry of discussion as the police around him consulted supervisors and contacted the palace, but when Sebastian started walking again, they moved with him, keeping a very clear distance. He ignored that, walking straight back to the palace.

By the time he arrived, he was expected.

Throwing the severed head on the marble floor at Jim’s feet, Sebastian strode forward, absolutely intent on claiming the emperor as his prize.

The jolt through his collar dropped him to his knees with a roar, and he had the wit to stay there, glaring angrily up at Moriarty.

“Oh, Tiger,” Jim said, descending the steps of the dias and combing his fingers into Sebastian’s hair. Sebastian narrowed his eyes in fury, and just _barely_ kept himself from pouncing. “That was beautifully done. Even if you did cost me a very valuable piece of property.”

Shoving at Sebastian’s head and earning a snarl for it, Jim turned his back and returned to his throne, laughing. “Someone get my poor kitten a shower.”


	3. Chapter 3

His status went up after the beheading. Or at least Jim’s trust in him did.

When he was clean and dressed again in the plain black slacks that were his daily uniform, Sebastian found himself led into the emperor’s personal chambers for the first time. He was chained to a wall, within comfortable reach of a lavish couch and within sight of Jim’s spacious bed.

That seemed like an unnecessary cruelty, to chain him up within sight but out of reach of what he wanted. Settling sulkily onto the couch, he watched through narrowed eyes when Jim entered.

The emperor ignored him and walked past into the lavish bathroom, emerging fresh and clad only in a pair of silken pyjama bottoms. Sebastian’s nostrils flared, annoyed that Jim’s natural omega scent had been freshly covered over by soaps and colognes.

“Evening, Sebastian,” Moriarty stopped in front of him, just out of reach, with a serpentine smile.

Rising from the couch, Sebastian took a few steps forward, standing casually with his chain still loose. He had made progress from being locked in that depressing little cell down the hall. He didn’t want to piss Moriarty off enough to find himself tossed back in there. “Evening.”

“Hands behind your back and keep them there.”

Intrigued, Sebastian obeyed, clasping his hands behind his back and straightening into a military posture. His pride roiled as Jim looked him over like he was meat, but he was too curious about where this was going to risk his usual amount of lip.

After a moment of consideration, Jim stepped forward, _within reach_ , and beckoned. Sebastian took the last two steps forward, his chain pulling taut. Their faces inches apart, he realized that Jim had been smart to wash so stringently. If he’d had even a whiff of scent on him, Sebastian’s control would have snapped right here.

As if to fray that tight-strung control further, Jim leaned in on tiptoe and kissed him.

Digging his nails into his palm to keep steady, Sebastian returned it, rough and bruising, every instinct howling at him to grab, fuck, possess. _Minemineminemine._

It took fifteen seconds for him to lose it.

Lust entirely overriding his brain, his hands came up to grab Jim’s head, tongue thrusting deep into his mouth.

Pain crackled through him from the shock collar, but Sebastian stood his ground. One thought flicked through his head, _I could snap your neck right now_ , before self preservation kicked in and he let go.

Jim stepped out of reach, the collar turned off, and Sebastian swiped for him with a frustrated roar.

“Temper, temper,” Moriarty chuckled, leaving him to snarl incoherently and strain at his restraints as Jim climbed into bed and curled up alone.

Every muscle tense, it took ten minutes for Sebastian’s hormones to stop flaring enough that he could stop trying to choke himself. Sprawling angrily on his couch, he watched the bed through narrowed eyes for hours until sleep finally claimed him.

The next day, his chain was left off.

Jim kept the controls for the collar within his palm, and there was a tiny warning shock any time Sebastian came within five feet of him, but the acceptable radius allowed Sebastian closer than any of Jim’s guards, and it was a nice change to not have to be unlocked from a leash every time Jim had a purpose for him. It allowed him to gain a more subtle understanding of Jim’s moods. Even without being bonded to him, Sebastian learned the nuances of the emperor’s temper, and could easily be halfway across the room with his target limp at his feet before anyone else realized that Jim wanted someone dead.

The leash was still very much present, in the form of the little remote in Jim’s palm, but this new situation was vastly preferable. Every night a guard locked him back on the chain to the wall, while Sebastian sulked and kept an intent watch on his owner. Still, Jim had to go into heat sometime, and he would need Sebastian for that.

So Sebastian waited, alert to the slightest changes in Moriarty’s scent. And when, _finally_ , there was a change, he noticed. He wasn’t sure if anyone else knew, since no other alphas came within twenty feet of Jim, but Sebastian knew, and Jim seemed downright amused by that fact.

He shifted into a new role as a bodyguard, not even letting the emperor’s guards near him. Testing the limits of how close he could get, he needed more and more frequent shocks from the collar to keep him in line, although Jim never otherwise acknowledged the growing tension as his heat-musk grew stronger.

There were two days of that, until Sebastian grew bold enough to grab him and shove him up against the nearest wall, kissing him aggressively.

The shock from the collar that they needed to get him off Jim was almost incapacitating, but it still took four of them to drag him away. They threw him in a prison cell down in the cellar and left him there to snarl and spit curses at anyone who drew near.

Sebastian tolerated the cell, once he’d calmed down. Jim’s heat was less than a day away, at which time he would be overwhelmed by the need to be fucked and filled. All that great clever intellect he was so proud of would be washed away under a flood of hormones that would turn him into just another cock-hungry omega.

Except that he wasn’t just another omega. He was Sebastian’s, and he would kill any alpha who even thought to look at _his_ bitch. His Jim.

Pacing back and forth along the length of the cell, driven half-mad by the knowledge that Jim was upstairs, on the edge of a heat, Sebastian twitched at every sound in hopes it was someone here to release him, so that he could go back upstairs. Jim was waiting. Jim needed him.

Why wasn’t someone coming to get him?

The cell went dark as the light faded from the single skinny window, and still no one came. Sebastian raged, and paced, and roared profanities, but no one came. There wasn’t time. There wasn’t _time_. Why did no one come?

By the time the sun rose again, Sebastian was fully out of his mind with the knowledge that the heat should have begun by now, and no one had come to get him. Jim was somewhere, _somewhere_ upstairs, probably begging to be fucked, and Sebastian was locked behind bars on the far side of the palace. There had to be another alpha. Or was he--like an idiot omega--trying to sate his need with some filthy beta who couldn’t impregnate him?

Sebastian rattled the entire wing of the palace with his roars, but still no one came.

Three days of heat. On the first, no one came. On the second, no one came. It was the third day before anyone risked Sebastian’s temper enough to bother to bring him food. Some beta came to slide a tray within his reach. Sebastian wanted to throw it in their face, and briefly calculated his ability to decapitate someone with a dinner tray, but hunger and his alpha metabolism won out, and he ate the food.

And even then, it wasn’t until late on the fourth day that they let him out. Snarling but weakened by the lack of food, Sebastian let them snap the chains onto his wrists and collar, and proudly ignored all four of the twitching guards who escorted him back upstairs. They put him in Jim’s room, chained to the wall as usual, and left him there to pace the length of his leash and sniff futilely for any scent of musk--alpha or omega.

There was nothing. No scent at all but Jim’s usual underlying scent of omega and the perfumed soaps he favored.

When Moriarty appeared through the door, alone, Sebastian was at the end of his chain in an instant, every muscle straining to get to him.

“Evening, Sebastian,” he said, without a glance, headed toward the bathroom as usual.

“ _Who?_ ” Sebastian demanded, constrained within the radius of his chain. “Who did you let fuck you?”

Jim just laughed and shut the door in his face.

Out of his mind with lust and jealousy, Sebastian grabbed at him when he went by, even though Jim was several feet out of his range.

“Try to control yourself, pet,” Jim snapped at him, but otherwise refused to acknowledge him or any of his jealous demands.

Ego deflated by his own helplessness, Sebastian curled up on the couch and sulked.

It was several days before he put together all of the information. Jim had looked drained and weak after his heat. A satisfied omega should have been glowing with health. The lack of any sexual scent in his room meant that even Jim hadn’t been in his room over the heat. And he had no marks on him that any healthy, possessive alpha would have left.

Jim let him sulk for a few days, leaving him chained up on the couch in the corner of his room.

“You quarantined yourself,” Sebastian said, once he finally got over enough of his pride and jealousy to be able to use his brain.

“Figured it out, did you?” Jim praised. “Clever boy.”

“Why?”

“Try being an omega,” Jim snapped. “You think it’s fun? I am the emperor. I cannot afford to be weak.”

“I could protect you,” Sebastian raged, but that was the hormones talking. He paced along the length of his chain for a minute, calming himself. “Why keep me, if not to fuck you?”

“What do you think?” Jim asked, testing him.

Sebastian clenched his jaw. “Trophy?”

“Got it in one. Have you seen you? Smart, deadly and gorgeous? Even other alphas are terrified of you, and you’re on my leash. Is any of this sinking in?”

“I don’t get to fuck you.”

“No. No, you don’t. But neither does anyone else, if it makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t,” he lied. It did. Quite a bit, really. And as the baser part of his mind assured him, it was only a matter of time. Jim was his. He would find a way.


	4. Chapter 4

Three months. Given the statistical average for omegas, he had three months before Jim’s next heat.

When Sebastian had calmed down and the air had cleared, Jim allowed him to return to his role as bodyguard, without chains. He followed the emperor everywhere, killed on command, and occasionally even got sent on assignments outside the palace, most of which ended in blood. Once he realized Sebastian’s full range of skills, Jim took him down to the dungeons from time to time, and watched him work on some spy or political enemy with valuable secrets to be wrung out.

Sometimes, when they were alone, Jim would talk with him. They made conversation about the imbecility of the courtiers, chatted over new and interesting modes of torture, or discussed philosophical quandaries until Jim got fed up with Sebastian’s “dull, ordinary mind.” Jim gave him books to read, and Sebastian complained about how he hated books, but read them anyway.

A guard always fastened the leash back on his collar at night, leaving him to sleep and sulk within sight of what he could never have.

When Jim went into his war councils, from which Sebastian was still banned, Sebastian prowled the halls freely. He had one to three hours each day while Jim was in war councils, so he raided the kitchens, prowled the library and growled at random courtiers in the halls to make them spook and run. In the libraries he found maps and records, all manner of things to which an enemy alpha probably shouldn’t have access, but it occurred to no one to prevent him. He studied them for hours, memorizing layouts of the palace, and when he wandered the halls, he looked for inconsistencies on the published blueprints.

This was how he found that there was additional door in the emperor’s wing of the palace that didn’t belong, that never opened, and that had no windows or other access. The door was coded with an electronic lock, that would open only with a correctly-coded key. The few people he asked told him it was storage, but couldn’t say storage of what, and no one had a key.

It took him over a month to figure out who did.

By the time Jim’s heat came around again, Sebastian was his right hand. He was the emperor’s sword and shield, loyalty unquestioned by the court despite his enemy origins.

“I’m sorry about this, Sebastian,” Jim said, face impassive as they dragged his pet away.

Sebastian struggled and cursed, fighting with them every step of the way down to the dungeons. They tossed him into a cell, the same cell he had occupied three months ago, and left him there, not thinking that the emperor’s right hand had access to every single key in the dungeon.

Cursing and yelling for the rest of the day, as they would expect, Sebastian waited until dark before setting to work. When the night had started to deepen and the court was quiet, Sebastian tore out the copy of the key that he’d sewn into the hem of his pants, and let himself out.

Jim kept his quarterly condition a tight secret, and whatever the court might suspect, the secret meant that no one but a few guards knew that Sebastian was supposed to be in the dungeons. He knew the routes where he would run into the fewest people, and the few courtiers he saw never questioned his presence.

He went straight to the chambers of the omega noble that he knew the emperor trusted--as much as Moriarty trusted anybody--lifting a gun off a guard along the way.

Letting himself in, he watched with a smirk for a moment, having walked in on the omega noble being penetrated by his pet alpha. The haze of pheromones in the air set his nerves on edge, but he wasn’t interested in this sloppy scene.

The alpha’s growled and the omega yelped when Sebastian stepped into view. Gun aimed at the alpha, where it would do the most good, Sebastian kept as much distance from them as possible. A strange man walking in mid-coitus would make any alpha homicidal, and Sebastian preferred that this didn’t get messy.

“You know what I’m here for,” he said, their mingled scents making his skin crawl. They were knotted. Disgusting. He wanted out. He wanted Jim. “And you know that I can make you give it to me. I’m in a hurry, so how about you make this easy on all of us and just hand it over.”

“And if we do,” the omega argued, panting. Sebastian wanted to laugh. The bitch was trying not to come. “If we do, the emperor will kill us.”

“He might,” Sebastian agreed. “But if he’s in a very good mood he might reward you. Whereas I will definitely torture you until you tell me where the key is, so all in all your chances are best if you _give me the damn key_.”

“That box,” the omega whimpered. “It has a false bottom.”

Keeping the gun trained on them, Sebastian picked up the little ornamental box and upended it, shaking until the bottom popped open and a little electronic key fell out. He palmed that, looking back over with a sneer. If the omega had given him the wrong key, he would come back here and start feeding them pieces of each other. Stating the threat was unnecessary. They knew who he was.

He hurried. Jim was waiting for him. Needed him.

Ducking into the corridor, he ran straight into two of Jim’s guards standing in front of the door he needed. He didn’t want to damage some of Jim’s most valued guards, but they were in his way. Lucky for him he had the element of surprise, and they didn’t want to damage him, either, so it took him only a few seconds to knock them both out and leave the bodies on the floor as he fit the key into the slot and slipped through the door.

The room inside was thick with a haze of omega pheromones. Plain and dimly lit, there wasn’t much in the room other than the bed and a stash of food and water on a nearby table. The remote for Sebastian’s collar was nowhere in sight. Jim was curled on the bed, whimpering as he pushed a thick dildo into himself, as if that would compensate for the alpha cock that he so desperately needed.

“Sebastian?” he whispered, voice so unlike the cruel emperor that Sebastian knew. Shuddering, he rolled onto his knees and arched his back, instinct taking over as he presented himself like a good omega.

“You stupid cunt,” Sebastian laughed, pulling the dildo from him and tossing it out of the way. Quarantining omegas in heat was considered torture in Naxos. It was probably much the same here. Sebastian didn’t know. What kind of idiot omega would intentionally put himself through that kind of suffering? “You’ll only make it worse with that.”

“Please,” Jim begged.

“Yes,” Sebastian promised. “You’re mine.” He pushed two fingers up inside Jim, hearing him yelp. So wet and eager. So _stupid_ , trying to keep Sebastian away from what was his.

Blood pounding in his veins, he pulled out the fingers and leaned down to taste the wet musk leaking down Jim’s thighs. It was rich, omega in heat, _his_ omega, and he’d been on enforced celibacy for far too long.

Tearing his pants away and not caring when they ripped, Sebastian pushed him farther up the bed and mounted him, pushing in with one thrust.

Jim _moaned_ , caterwauling with pleasure. He needed this. His omega body went into withdrawal without the seed of an alpha inside him on a regular basis, if only during his heats--although Sebastian would gladly fuck him on a daily basis.

“I will make you _suffer_ for this,” Jim promised, as his hips squirmed gratefully into each thrust.

Sebastian laughed, enjoying the way Jim’s hands scrabbled at the bedsheets, trying to brace himself against Sebastian’s rough fucking. “I don’t think you will,” he said, pounding into that tight, slick heat around him. “You were made for this. To be my whore. A vessel for my seed.”

Jim whimpered, both of them on a short fuse after so long without, gasping as Sebastian’s growing knot started pushing in and out of him with a little pop. “ _Bastian_.”

“Mine,” Sebastian said. When the knot got too large to thrust in, Sebastian just grabbed his hips and slammed forward, forcing it inside and earning a scream from Moriarty.

“Bastian,” Jim babbled, body clenching around that knot. “No. Yes. Gods yes.”

Growling happily, Sebastian braced himself over his mate with one arm, using the other to reach down and stroke him. It got exactly the reaction he wanted, making Jim squirm and clench around his cock. “You needed this,” he purred into Jim’s ear. “You needed to be mated. My bitch.”

“Go to hell,” Jim gasped, struggling weakly as he felt Sebastian’s cock start to pump seed inside him, the feeling triggering his traitorous body into an orgasm of his own as he welcomed the seed inside.

Groaning softly, Sebastian wrapped both arms around his lover’s chest, pulling him onto his side and staying spooned behind him while they were knotted together. He continued stroking at Jim’s dick, enjoying that it triggered more frequent orgasms from Jim than the penetration alone.

“Going to make you bear for me,” Sebastian chuckled, hand slipping from Jim’s phallus to rub at his belly. “I will fill you with my spawn, and you will bear them for me, like you were meant to do.”

Jim laughed at him, effectively shattering Sebastian’s happy mid-coital daze. “You _idiot_. We have _birth control_.”

Sebastian snarled when that sank in. Of course they did. And of course Jim would be on it, even if he was quarantining himself for heats. You could never be too careful--a sex-crazed alpha might steal the key to your cell and rape you.

When his knot finally shrank enough to unlock them, Sebastian slid out, wandering to the bathroom to clean himself off and piss. He took some dried fruit from the stash on the table and munched on it as he watched his owner. Jim was curled defensively into himself, but his omega bitch instincts were strong, and it didn’t take long for him to roll onto his back and spread his thighs, silently begging.

Omegas in heat. Sebastian laughed at the thought. Even Moriarty was reduced to a begging slut, needing to be filled over and over again for an exhausting three days.

“Oh, you sweet bitch,” Sebastian admired, walking over and tracing a finger around Moriarty’s hole, loving the way he twitched and whimpered, hips straining upward in desperation to be penetrated, if only by a finger. “My Jim. My whore.”

“Not yours,” Jim snapped, which made Sebastian _growl_ with possessive jealousy. Grabbing Jim’s hips, he rammed himself inside, bracing himself over his partner and glaring down at him.

“Say that again,” Sebastian dared.

“Not,” Jim laughed, weakly, his body shaking again with how much he needed this, “yours, you ignorant cretin. You _lesser_ beast. You do not deserve me.”

Roaring with fury, Sebastian slammed hard into him, making him yelp. Angry, he pulled out and flipped Jim over, letting him beg for a minute while Sebastian looked around for a gag.

“Gods bedamned, Sebastian,” Jim grumbled, clawing at the sheets with impatience. “If you’re going to be here then make yourself useful and fuck me, you pistoning brute.”

Deciding on a pillow case for the purpose, Sebastian gagged him, deciding this situation was _much_ improved when Jim couldn’t make any sounds other than moans.

Struggling against this new development, Jim snarled against the gag but then groaned and arched as Sebastian slid back inside, giving them both what they wanted.

“Mine,” Sebastian restated, and yes, it was much better when Jim couldn’t correct him. “My bitch. My whore. My sweet tight _hole_. You’re a joke, emperor,” he whispered in Jim’s ear, with a laugh. “You can rule the omegas, but you’re only a bitch to me. Meant to be fucked. This is your only purpose, you filthy omega whore.”

Jim thrashed against him, but Sebastian ignored that. The squirming was just delicious.

When they knotted again, he curled close behind the emperor, holding him. Grateful for the silence, he let Jim sulk. He’d earned it, from all the times he’d left Sebastian chained up and sulking. Biting down on Jim’s shoulder, Sebastian marked him, licking at the indentations left by his teeth. He wanted those marks. Even if Jim chained him up in the corner again, they would both know that he was marked as Sebastian’s.

Jim just lay there when he pulled out, Sebastian’s come leaking down his thigh, watching with dark eyes as Sebastian stretched and wandered around, nibbling a little more of the food.

“Feeling any better now?” Sebastian asked, reaching over to remove the gag.

Jim glared at him, but he didn’t take the opportunity to comment, which Sebastian thought was progress, and brought over some fruit for him to eat. Taking the fruit, Jim rolled over, turning his back on Sebastian.

Shrugging, Sebastian sprawled next to him and napped lazily. It wouldn’t be long before Jim would need another round.

He was right about that. When he woke up, Jim was straddling him, just starting to sink down onto his phallus. Coming fully awake with a grin, Sebastian lifted his hips quickly, burying himself to the hilt and making Jim hiss.

“Easy, you bastard,” Jim grumbled at him. “I’m sore.”

“You wouldn’t be if you let me fuck you more often.” Hands tightening on Jim’s hips with every intent of leaving bruises, he pulled him down and held him in place.

“Don’t start your sneering alpha diatribes again,” Jim said.

“Don’t make me gag you, whore,” Sebastian countered.

Jim grunted with frustration. “Dammit, Sebastian, shut up and _fuck_ me.”

Laughing, Sebastian obeyed. He released Jim’s hips, lifting his own briefly to encourage Jim to ride him, and then put his hands behind his head, enjoying the view. Moriarty’s face twisted with anger and humiliation, but his body’s needs were too overwhelming. Whimpering, he slid up and down on Sebastian’s cock, trying to get as much of Sebastian in him as possible.

As the knot started swelling, Sebastian flipped him over, forcing the knot in and out of him and eliciting whimpers from Jim until the knot stuck and they were tied together for a third time.

Taking advantage of this position, Sebastian leaned down to take the kisses that Jim had denied him. At first Jim turned his face away and tried to bite, but Sebastian just wrenched his head back with a hand in his hair and forced his tongue down Jim’s throat until he gave in to the inevitable and kissed back, rough and angry.

“Mine,” Sebastian said, when he finally released him from the kisses and pulled out.

“Not yours,” Jim retorted. “Never yours, Sebastian.”


	5. Chapter 5

When Jim was himself again, he had Sebastian whipped.

The chains snapped on, his guards rougher than they had ever been, and he was dragged to the throne room. Forced to his knees, Sebastian braced himself for the first lashes.

He was an idiot. The past few days, in his hormone-crazed consciousness, he’d thought he might get to keep Jim. That wouldn’t have been so bad. Still frustrating and humiliating, to be kept as a sex slave and often on a leash. But he’d thought, stupidly, that the magical power of their orgasms would have bonded them enough that Jim would give up this moronic habit of self-denial.

Jim had his birth control, didn’t he? What the hell was the problem?

His rage braced him through the first strokes, until they started to draw blood, and then his stubbornness was enough to keep him quiet. But as the cuts grew deeper and deeper, turning his back into a mangled mess of torn flesh, he yelled, and whimpered. By the end of it, he didn’t even recognize the sounds coming out of his mouth.

When he awoke, his back felt like it was aflame and his head was fogged. He had no recollection of the end of the punishment, whether he had passed out or simply been in such a haze of pain that his memory was gone. He was in an unfamiliar room. Dark and dingy, with a paltry collection of medical supplies at one end and a small collection of unoccupied beds.

Not good. Probably not the palace. Jim... where was Jim...?

A nurse came in to change his bandages and use some kind of machine on his back. Sebastian woke from the haze of pain only long enough to register a different kind of pain, and then passed out again. He didn’t know how much time passed before he woke up lucid, cursing and grumbling at the pain as his bandages were changed again. “Where am I?”

“Combat hospital,” the nurse informed him.

Combat hospital? Oh. Oh, shit. “The fighting rings.”

“Correct.”

“What’s my rank?” he asked. It seemed like the quickest way to find out his situation.

“Zero.”

The emperor had thrown him back in the fighting rings. And he had to start again, fighting his way up to the top. If at any point he lost, any noble could claim him.

No. This was not acceptable.

_No._

Emotional pain and frustration added to his physical pain, Sebastian shut up and let the nurse replace his bandages and torture him with one of their damn medical devices to accelerate healing. He really, really was starting to hate their medical technology around here.

Moriarty wanted him to fight? Fine. He would fight, and he would win.

It took him a month to make it up through the ranks. He finished his fights with brutal efficiency, leaving half his opponents dead just to spite their captors. Outside the city, the war raged on, but these alphas would never make it back to the battlefield. They would die in the arena or they would end up as fucktoy to some rich omega. Sebastian preferred them dead.

He kept his eyes open and his wits sharp, because if Moriarty didn’t claim him once he got to the top, he would need to escape on his own ability. It didn’t seem like that would be too hard. There were guards everywhere, but all it took was overpowering one and stealing his gun and then Sebastian could manage the rest of them, if he didn’t get cornered and overwhelmed.

The stench and the glare of the emperor’s arena were hatefully familiar.

Sebastian stalked out into the empty arena and looked around, surprised to find himself alone. The stands on all sides were packed, including the Emperor’s private box. Sebastian’s pulse quickened at the sight of him, in a confusing muddle of wrath and lust. But there was no opponent in the arena. The far door was still closed.

Something was wrong with this situation. Clenching his fist, Sebastian scanned the arena, looking for anything out of place. Nothing. Just no opponent. But the crowd was waiting for something. They knew something he didn’t.

The door across the arena slid open, onto darkness. Sebastian shifted on the pads of his feet, but it only took a moment before a fully-grown male tiger paced out of the open door.

Sebastian’s heart dropped into his gut. Jim was trying to kill him. Jim was unquestionably _trying to kill him_.

He was unarmed and unarmored, going up against an adult tiger armed with a gleaming array of teeth and claws. Nothing around the arena he could use as tool. Nothing but sand. There was no catch here. No trick. Just him and the tiger.

The tiger was temporarily dazzled by the by the lights, but that wouldn’t last long, and Sebastian wouldn’t be able to make it across the arena quickly enough to take advantage of it.

Instead he studied his opponent, looking for any weakness that would give him an advantage. There was a slight limp from the left back leg. Maybe some old fighting injury? And he was missing a tooth. Not the youngest tiger, then. Not in his prime, but still deadly. Probably deadlier than Sebastian.

Within seconds, the tiger had spotted him. It started circling closer, trying to measure whether Sebastian was threat or prey. It was almost twice Sebastian’s size, and he knew full well that tigers were capable of taking down beasts much, much larger than Sebastian. His chances here were not good. And they had probably starved the beast for a day or two to make him appropriately vicious.

A shift in the tiger’s stance said he’d made his decision. Prey. Bracing himself as the tiger charged, Sebastian sidestepped at the last second and threw a right cross at the tiger’s face.

Wobbling sideways, the tiger backed off and reassessed the situation. _That_ had never happened to it before. Food was not supposed to hit back.

Fists up, Sebastian waited. A wild tiger probably would have backed right off, but this one was corralled in an unfamiliar arena, with no escape route, and it was very, very hungry.

The tiger sallied an experimental swipe at him with a paw, which Sebastian dodged, and then they began circling each other. Roaring at him, the tiger pounced. Sebastian rolled out of the way, grabbing the tiger’s tail as he passed and giving it a good yank.

Yelping, the tiger hopped back out of range, sulking and nursing its injury.

It was progress, but he couldn’t keep this up forever. Those claws were wicked, and the first swipe he failed to dodge might likely gut him, which would happen long before he managed to wear the tiger down by punching it.

On its next swipe, Sebastian rolled right. It had a harder time turning to the left because of its old injury, and he used the delay to attack. Tackling the tiger, he got one arm around its neck and tightened, trying to choke it.

That plan worked for about two seconds, until a swipe of the tiger’s paw hit him across the head and set his ears to ringing. Sebastian rolled away, dazed, trying to just keep his feet and ignoring the blood dripping down his face. Decent plan. Poor execution.

With his bare hands, he could blind it, but then he would have a very pissed off and only slightly less dangerous tiger that could track him by scent and sound. He could try to wear it down, and probably lose, or he could try to choke it again.

“Gods damn you, Jim Moriarty,” he muttered. This had to be by far the craziest thing he’d ever tried to survive.

Bending down to grab a handful of sand, he waited for the tiger to charge and threw it in its face. It roared and backed up, but Sebastian ran and grabbed it, getting an arm around its neck and a knee on its back. Wrenching the tiger’s head up and forcing it to arch its spine, Sebastian held on for his life. By arching the tiger’s back, it had a harder time keeping its balance, and it was slower to swipe its paws over his head. Every time it tried, Sebastian gave its head another wrench upward, unbalancing it again so that the paw went back down.

Tiger skin was loose, and choking it was like trying to hold on to a roiling sack of tigers, but there wasn’t far his arm could slip between skull and shoulders. Tossing its head back and forth and trying to back out of Sebastian’s grip, it weakened as he choked it, confused and scared by this turn of events. Sebastian just held on, giving the tiger the occasional clobber with his fist whenever he had a particularly good grip.

Eventually the tiger flopped down, pawing weakly at the ground and ceasing to fight. Sebastian tightened his grip, fully cutting off the air supply now that the tiger wasn’t thrashing, and waited until it went still.

Very warily, Sebastian got up and backed away from the tiger, taking a shaky breath when it actually _stayed down_. He hoped he hadn’t killed the beast. He had a higher respect for tigers than for most people. It didn’t deserve to die for the entertainment of a crowd.

The stadium all around him was silent. He looked up at the emperor’s box and saw James Moriarty begin to clap. Within seconds the crowd erupted into applause.

So. He was going to live. That was nice to know.

The door on his side of the arena opened. Head still ringing, he took one last glance at the tiger, and then turned and walked out of the arena.

Once on the other side, he dropped to his knees, gasping and shaking. No one to see him here but the guards. It took him a minute to get himself under control, running his hands through his hair and gulping down air. When he had recovered, he got to his feet, and the guards took him to get cleaned off and brought before the emperor.

Hands chained in front of him, he stood before Moriarty’s throne. He didn’t have anything to say.

“It was a pleasure to see you in an equal fight for once, kitten,” Jim said. “Against your own kind.”

Sebastian wanted to punch him. He clenched his jaw, glaring.

“If you don’t _want_ me to take you back, I can find a nice tiger pen for you,” Jim threatened.

He would, too. Forcing his pride back down, Sebastian dropped to his knees and lowered his head.

“Something you’d like to say, kitty?”

Sebastian smirked, looking up at Jim through a sandy fringe of hair. “I missed you.”

Laughing, Jim waved a hand, and Sebastian was chained up at his previous spot on the side of the throne, reduced again to trophy and pet.

Not dead, that was a plus. But his pride was stung, and it was quite clear that Sebastian wouldn’t be getting past Jim’s defenses again while he was in heat.

Every part of this was unacceptable. He saw no way out. But he would. He would bide his time and plan. He would have his revenge, and he would have Jim.

Within a month, he had a plan.


	6. Chapter 6

After a week of ignoring him, Jim restored Sebastian’s earlier privileges, and Sebastian fell comfortably back into the routine. He was the emperor’s pet and bodyguard again, even while his pride roiled and his libido itched.

On one restless day, Sebastian spent the whole day mouthing off. He chased off guards, spooked nobles, and pawed possessively at Jim twice, until Moriarty’s temper was frayed. When they got back to the room, as soon as the door closed, he grabbed Jim, wresting the collar remote from him and tossing it.

“Have you gone _mad?_ ” Jim hissed.

Sebastian just ignored that, tipping his head up and kissing him. It was maddening how little of this he got. Nothing at all since Jim’s last heat, not even as a reward for fighting the damn tiger.

Jim shoved at him, but Sebastian still forced the kiss for a minute before letting it break.

“Some days you are nothing but a stupid alpha,” Jim growled, thrashing against him. “Are you dense, Sebastian? You cannot have this, and I’m getting a little tired of having to remind you of that.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t want it,” Sebastian whispered, herding him toward the bed.

“I am _very_ fond of you, Tiger, but I will skin you and replace you if you don’t learn your place soon.”

“Tell me all about it tomorrow,” Sebastian said, pushing him down on the bed.

“We’re done here. Guards!”

Frustrated as ever, Sebastian cut off his cry with another kiss, but it was too late. The guards pushed through the door and hauled him off.

“Toss him in the dungeon until he cools off,” Moriarty said, straightening his clothing with a scowl. “Use the time to think about what you’ve done, Sebastian, and don’t do it again.”

“I will have you,” Sebastian promised, as the guards dragged him away.

They threw him in one of the cells in the dungeon, not his usual, but Sebastian didn’t care. A week ago Jim had assigned him to torture an electrician, and Sebastian may have withheld a few details when he reported his findings to the emperor. Details like how to short-circuit one of the new cell locks from the inside.

Picking open a panel on his collar, Sebastian tugged until he found the loose wire--the one he’d tucked in among all the wires that belonged in the collar. It only took a minute to connect it to the correct nodes on the panel and the door slid open for him.

No alarms. Good. Sebastian stepped out and looked around. The dungeons were his territory, and he knew exactly who was down here and where. He opened two of the nearest cells, both with high-ranking Naxian alphas inside. “I’m going to need you to work fast and obey me,” Sebastian said, pointing one of them down the hall. “Guard just around that corner on the right. Take him out and toss the body in one of the cells. Then back to me.”

Meanwhile, he pulled a tiny hook out of his pocket, flicking open the second alpha’s slave collar and checking the connections in it, making sure that the yellow wire did indeed connect where it should before tugging it. The light on the front panel went dark, and the alpha didn’t die. So far, so good.

He deactivated the second collar, showed them on each other what he had done, and then had one of them clip the wire on his collar. It deactivated neatly, and he got them moving. There were three other Naxian alphas in the dungeon that he wanted with him, and a team of six alphas was more than deadly enough to handle any guards in their way.

They were all generals, accustomed to commanding on their own, but they figured out quickly enough that obeying Sebastian would keep them all alive

Alarms did start blaring when they got upstairs, but Sebastian was already halfway to where he needed to be. All that time alone in the library had taught him where they kept the central defense grid, and how it worked.

He killed the guards at the door, shorted the lock, and then posted his own guards on the inside of the door while he got to work. Technology was not his strong point, but he was confident he had memorized what he needed.

“Naxian High Command,” he sent over the communications system, while he shorted out the city shields and then damaged the mechanism. He got a couple of the other alphas started using some of the central city defenses against the Delian troops, and grinned as he watched the chaos unfolding on the view screens. “This is Colonel Sebastian Moran, formerly of the Fifth Naxian Fusiliers. I’ve got a city for you.”

The battle only lasted a few hours. Attacked from without and within, the Delian army crumbled.

By the time the Naxian army got to them, the emperor’s palace was largely evacuated, leaving Sebastian and his team alone at the center. The emperor’s whereabouts were unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. But the next one will have porn, I promise.


	7. Chapter 7

“Brigadier Moran.”

Sebastian looked up from the maps he was studying, plotting out an attack against one of the Delian cities that had been stubbornly holding out against the Naxian advance. He looked up at the lieutenant standing at attention in the doorway and nodded. “Report.”

“There’s an omega captive who has been asking for you.”

“An omega?” Must be one of the nobles who knew him from the emperor’s court. “What’s the name?”

“Richard Brook, sir.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t know that name. What else can you tell me?”

“He was taken from one of the transports fleeing the capitol when we attacked. Apparently he has been asking for you for a few days, but no one took note. It was assumed he was simply causing trouble.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Sebastian moved a marker on his map, only half paying attention. “But I still don’t recognize the name. Is he attractive?”

The lieutenant’s breath caught very slightly as he replied. “Yes, sir.”

Interested now, Sebastian glared over at him, instantly jealous over this unknown omega just because another alpha was attracted to him. He had a substantial amount of rank, now. Almost any omega he wanted was his for the taking. Except that he wanted Jim, who remained missing.

“Put him in my chambers, then. I’m in need of an omega.” Dismissing him with that, Sebastian went back to his tactics.

He forgot about the encounter, until the evening was getting late, and he stepped into his rooms and found Emperor Moriarty collared, chained to the wall, and sulking.

Sebastian stopped in the doorway, stunned. He had quite a bit of authority now, but he wasn’t this high-ranking. They had knowingly given him the omega emperor as a toy?

Oh. No.

When it clicked, he started to laugh. Shutting and locking the door, he took a seat and watched Jim, laughing at the mad irony of the situation. “They don’t know who you are.”

“Evening, Sebastian,” Jim said, his eyes dark with simmering fury.

“Evening, _Richard_ ,” Sebastian replied, chuckling. “How _have_ you been?”

“Betrayed. I thought we had a special something, Sebastian.”

“We did.” Sebastian walked forward, checking Jim’s hands for palmed weapons, then stripping off the loose slacks Jim wore and tossing them aside. If he had been smart enough to conceal tools and weapons in his clothing, Jim absolutely was clever enough for a trick like that. He knew that Moriarty outclassed him considerably in intelligence, but there were ways to get around that. He’d effectively destroyed Moriarty’s empire in one move, after all. “Mouth,” he ordered, holding Jim’s jaw open as he checked thoroughly for concealed tools or false teeth.

“I didn’t have much time to prepare,” Jim said when he had finished, knowing exactly what sort of thing Sebastian was looking for.

“Of course you didn’t. If you did, you would have stopped me.”

“And then I would have thrown you in a dungeon and taken you apart piece by piece.”

Sebastian laughed, nuzzling at his neck and then biting down to mark him. He felt Jim twitch under his grip. “Oh, I know you would have. But admit it. You’re a little bit impressed.”

“Yes,” Jim said, tense and angry as Sebastian wrenched his chin up to meet his eyes. “I would have killed you for planning this. For succeeding, oh. For that, I would keep you alive. When I get you back in my power, Sebastian, I will torture you for years. I will take that strong body and that calculating mind of yours and I will destroy them both, until there is nothing left of you but a crying lump of former humanity.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Sebastian purred, and kissed him.

He checked Jim’s hands again, just in case, and then removed the chains. He left the collar. Jim had earned that. Let him suffer.

“You’re mine now,” he whispered, against Jim’s lips. “And I intend to keep you.”

Jim’s arms came up around his shoulders, embracing him back for the first time. “You won’t,” he promised, as he leaned up and sealed the kiss. It was bittersweet, now that the roles had shifted, and Jim was the prisoner. But it couldn’t last. He knew full well that Jim would hate being enslaved every inch as much as he had, maybe more. And Moriarty was a tactical genius. It was folly even having him here, or allowing him in any situation other than bound hand and foot and gagged in a thrice-locked room.

This way was more fun, however. Sebastian liked the risk of a battle of wits with Moriarty, seeing how long he could survive.

Lifting him by his ass, Sebastian grinned when Jim’s legs immediately tangled around his waist. He slid one hand down between his cheeks, one finger pushing inside because he was already so slick and ready. It made Jim squirm in his arms, and he laughed, carrying him over to the bed and dropping him down on it. “You’re eager tonight. Why are you eager tonight?”

“Why are you talking instead of fucking me?”

“Mouthing off is in my nature,” Sebastian snarked. He buried his face against Jim’s neck, breathing in the scent of him there and biting again, pleased when Jim arched with a little moan. Wanting more, he grabbed Jim beneath the knees, pushing his thighs up. The sight and scent of him was intoxicating, and Sebastian wanted nothing more than to fuck him until he was screaming, but tonight he intended to take his time with things. Tonight was all he could be sure of. Tonight was theirs. Tomorrow could bring anything.

Fingers roaming down Jim’s thighs, he traced a circle around his entrance, as Jim keened and writhed beneath him. “You’re mine,” Sebastian said, leaning down to bite the back Jim’s thigh and make him cry out. “Do me the favor of not contradicting me about that, just for tonight.”

“Such a romantic,” Jim quipped, but it turned into a gasp as Sebastian’s tongue flicked over his entrance, and then pushed inside.

His sweet omega. Jim dripped with musk. Dissolving into little whimpers as Sebastian’s tongue fucked into him, Jim bit down on his own hand to try and stifle the sounds.

“I ought to make you beg for me,” Sebastian threatened, dropping his thighs and moving up to leave bite marks across his chest and belly. But that would be far too ambitious, when Jim wasn’t in heat. He still needed this, his bitch body betraying him, but he wouldn’t beg. Not tonight.

Kneeling between Jim’s thighs, he teased two fingers at his ass, sliding them up inside and letting his captive squirm against his hand. Maybe Jim’s mouth wouldn’t beg, but his body would.

He scissored his fingers inside, appreciating how tight he was. That was one advantage to Jim’s idiotic celibacy. When he had been in heat, his entire body had been loose and relaxed, but he was tight now. Very tight.

A gentler lover might have been mindful of that, but not Sebastian. He only appreciated it on its value as an asset of his property.

So he took no more care with Jim than that before lifting his hips and forcing his way inside.

Jim’s breath caught, back arching off the bed with a little choked sound of pleasure and pain. Sebastian pinned him there a moment, impaled on his length as he leaned down to nip once at Jim’s earlobe. “Tell me. How many have had you?”

Jim laughed. “Hundreds.”

Sebastian pulled back and gave him a punishing thrust forward, hard enough to make him gasp. “I don’t believe you.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re a fool.” Squirming beneath him, Jim distracted him enough that Sebastian leaned down and kissed him, hips starting a slow but rough rhythm to fuck him.

Jim was so vulnerable like this, gasping and whimpering even as his legs locked around Sebastian’s waist to keep him close. Biting down hard on Jim’s shoulder, he kept his grip there through several rough thrusts, so that the quickly-forming bruise was ragged and dark.

“That birth control of yours,” Sebastian whispered in his ear, grinning darkly. “How long does it take to wear off?”

“Go to h-hell, Sebastian,” Jim said, between gasps, trying to squirm away as Sebastian’s knot began swelling, big enough that it _hurt_ every time he pulled out.

“That’s fine,” Sebastian said, when the knot finally stuck but still kept swelling inside him. “I’m happy to keep fucking you as long as it takes.”

“I didn’t think you were a boring _breeder_ , Bastian,” Jim complained, yelping and clutching at Sebastian as he rolled them so that Jim would be on top. “If you put a baby in me, I will cut it out.”

“Sounds like a challenge,” Sebastian countered, breathless, then groaned as he started pumping semen inside him.

Jim trembled around him, trying to resist, but he only held on a few seconds before he was coming, his own dick leaving a few thin streaks of white on Sebastian’s chest.

Grinding his hips up and making Jim whimper, Sebastian put his hands behind his head, enjoying the view. “That’s where you belong,” he said, rolling his hips again. “Locked on my cock. You are my bitch, and you always will be. Even if you kill me, you’ll still have this to remember, and every heat you endure, you will beg for _me_.”

“You’re a little bit self-involved, Sebastian,” Jim snapped, but it didn’t have the usual venom.

“It’s not so bad,” Sebastian smirked, wrapping his hand around Jim’s dick and starting to stroke him because it made him squirm so deliciously around the knot. “I’ll always be yours.”

Jim didn’t say a word in response, but Sebastian knew he had heard.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter probably deserves a warning, so. Warning for non-con Moriarty/Lestrade and general undeserved cruelty inflicted by author upon Greg Lestrade. Please leave your Lestrade feels at the door for this chapter and the next.

It took Moriarty a week to escape.

Sebastian was careful. Very, very careful. But Jim was smarter.

He had never been so humiliated. And if Sebastian thought he was just going to curl up and take it like a good bitch, he had another thing coming.

It took hardly any effort to lure a guard into the room, disarm him and take the keys. Sure, Sebastian had been extremely clear that the guards were not to enter the room under any circumstances, but when a fire broke out, what were they going to do? Let Sebastian’s precious property burn to death? It was a calculated risk, and it worked out just as planned.

From here, his plan was simple. The best plans always were. Get to the center of power, make yourself invaluable, and then wait for an opportunity to take over.

As fond as he was of Sebastian, there was no way he was going to stay as bedwarmer to a second-string brigadier. James Moriarty was meant to rule. And maybe, if things went well, he would keep Sebastian around for fun.

It was a nice thought, but unlikely. Both of them were too proud to accept slavery. Whichever one of them was in power, the other would ultimately betray and destroy him. And at this rate they were going to leave Naxos and Delos in ruins between them.

“Oh, Sebastian,” Jim said to no one, leaving the military compound in flames with blood on his hands. And he so _hated_ getting his hands dirty. That was what Sebastian was for. “Ours is a star-crossed love. Isn’t it _romantic?_ ”

Escaping Naxian territory would be difficult, especially now that Naxos controlled half of Delos, and his Delian power structure was in ruins. No, as long as he was here, he might as well destroy from within, like his darling Tiger had done to him.

Being an omega was the hardest part. At least Sebastian had gotten to roam freely in Delian society, as long as he was wearing a collar. In Naxos, omegas were expected to be kept at home, on a leash, in the bedroom. It made it much harder to just stroll down the street looking unassuming.

Not that Sebastian had ever been very good at looking _unassuming_. He seemed to prefer the storm-down-the-street-covered-in-blood-and-carrying-severed-heads route. Which, points for style, but Moriarty was capable of a little _subtlety._

He hijacked a transport, which got him to the front gates of the castle at the capitol, from where he had to coax his way in.

Through a combination of claiming his actual name and title and berating the idiot guards, he got them to drag him in front of the alpha king. Some moron alpha that Jim had never met, by the name of John Watson.

He was so _short_ for an alpha. Usually alphas were easily clear of six foot, but this one looked about Jim’s height, and the lanky, six foot omega standing by the side of the throne didn’t do much to help. Jim smirked as he wondered if idiot betas occasionally mistook the wrong one for the king.

“Who is this?” the king asked.

“Claims to be --”

“James Moriarty, Emperor of Delos,” Jim finished, interrupting the guard, and wiggled his fingers at the king in a wave. “Hiii.”

“He’s telling the truth,” the dark-haired omega by the throne said. “He’s Delian born and raised by his stance and the cut of his hair, nobility by the state of his nails, and given the traces of blood and soot on him and the fact that a lone omega made it here and fast-talked his way into the throne room, he’s very intelligent and most likely responsible for the fire at the military compound an hour ago.”

Ooh. Who was _that_? His fellow omega suddenly seemed so much more interesting. Was he the reason for the Naxian tactical improvements over the last few years? This whole war had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting when the Naxians seemed to learn that tactics worked even better than brute force. But Delos had still maintained superiority until Sebastian came along.

“How did he get into the military compound?”

“Oh, you can thank _Brigadier_ Moran for that,” Jim drawled. “We’re very close.”

“I heard that, yes.” Watson considered Moriarty closely. “And what brings you here?”

“I would like to negotiate,” Jim declared. “Seeing that everyone’s favorite former Colonel destroyed my empire, there’s nothing for me in Delos, and I’m not very fond of being a mere bedwarmer. I need a job.” As much as it goaded him to ask for it. “I’m a military genius, as you _might_ have noticed. I’m willing to consult for you, in return for a degree of independence. I don’t want to be anyone’s fucktoy.”

It was a good offer. It had worked for him before. It _should_ have worked for him now.

“No.” The king’s eyes were hard. There was a military rigidity to him. The lines around the mouth said that he was a fair king, and might in a different world have been a good man, but life in Naxos had hardened him. “I have a tactical consult, and I would prefer to have the loyalty of the man who beat you and handed me your country on a silver platter. I hear that Sebastian is bonded to you or at least wants to be, so he can have you. Although I think that some sort of punishment might be in order as a reminder to Sebastian to keep better guard on his toys. Lestrade, take care of it. I don’t care how.”

Bad. This was very bad.

“I will _burn_ you,” Moriarty promised. “I will burn you, and I will be there to watch you scream.”

John Watson merely waved a hand, bored, and Moriarty was dragged away.

He was gagged, bound and blindfolded before his punishment commenced. Left on his knees in a smallish room, he was joined only by the silver-haired alpha that the others had called Lestrade.

“You know, I’ve never liked Sebastian Moran,” Lestrade said, happy to talk without anyone responding. “He’s a drunk and a cheat. Reckless, dangerous, disloyal.”

Moriarty snorted. He could agree to that.

“So I think I’ll enjoy sending him a message.” There was the sound of a belt buckle being unfastened, and then hitting the floor.

_Fuck._

What should have been a simple, straightforward plan was going increasingly wrong. And now he was going to be raped by some sneering alpha who wasn’t his Sebastian. This slavery thing _really_ wasn’t working out for him.

He was pulled to his feet and bent over a table. Remaining still and limp, he let Lestrade manhandle him as he tried to think up a way out of this. He wasn’t going to struggle. The bonds were too tight, it would do him no good, and alphas always _liked_ it when their partners struggled.

Delicious squirming, Sebastian would have called it. No, don’t think of Sebastian.

Wait, yes. Think of Sebastian. If his body was going to betray him anyway, why not spare himself a little mental anguish and think of Sebastian?

 _Just don’t talk too much, you aging neanderthal,_ Jim thought as Les--Sebastian pulled down his trousers and stuck a finger inside him to gather his musk.

“Oh, aren’t you ripe to be fucked?” Lestrade asked, much to Jim’s frustration. He sounded nothing like Sebastian, although the uncreative sexist abuse that alphas counted as pillow talk was much the same.

 _Get it over with._ Jim wiggled his hips and whined, trying to tempt him. The sooner he was fucked, the sooner they would send him back to Sebastian and he could try to bleach this entire episode from his memory.

“I’d heard rumors that the omega emperor was supposed to be some frosty prude. But you’re no different from any other bitch, are you? Are you this eager for Sebastian?”

_Considerably more eager. Shutting up any time now would be great._

Mercifully, he did. Taking a firm grip on Jim’s hips, he pushed himself slowly inside, wiggling in order to push himself deeper.

_Sebastian would have just slammed into me._

_Sebastian._

Annoyed and finding his imagination strained by all the stupid little things Lestrade did that made him not-Sebastian, Jim just relaxed and took it. Lestrade was longer, not as thick. He thrust slowly, taking his time, and knew exactly what he was doing, hitting that one damn spot that made Jim squirm. Sebastian only ever smashed past that spot when he was rutting like an animal.

He didn’t care. Sebastian was _his_ alpha.

After all too long spent building up to it, Lestrade knotted him, gushing load after load of ejaculate inside him and then just waiting there, panting, until the knot softened and he pulled away.

Limp and tired of being used, Jim let himself be pulled to his feet by guards and hauled off to return to Sebastian.

He was left still blindfolded and gagged in an unfamiliar room of an unfamiliar house that supposedly belonged to Sebastian. Too tired and hurt to try finding his way to the bed, Jim just curled up on the middle of the rug and waited for Sebastian to find him.

After far too long, by which time the crick in Jim’s shoulder from the angle of his restraints had increased to a searing pain, there were footsteps at the door.

“That was remarkably stupid, for the great Emperor Moriarty,” Sebastian said, kneeling by his side to untie first the gag, then the blindfold, and finally his wrists. His touch was gentle, which was a pleasant change, and as soon as he was untied Sebastian helped him to his feet and steered him toward the bathroom. “You smell like whatever fucked you.”

“Its name was Lestrade,” Jim provided. “I thought you’d be more jealous.”

“I can barely see straight,” Sebastian said, a sharp edge in his voice, but he let go of Jim to turn the water on the shower, demonstrating how the shower head could be removed and extended into a hose. “And I will kill him. Wash yourself. Outside and in. I’m going to go burn the clothes you were wearing and that rug you were lying on.”

Jim stepped under the water, feeling his nerves calming already. “Shouldn’t you be setting three guards on me and reattaching my chains?”

Sebastian leaned in, water spattering his hair as he stole a kiss. “James Moriarty would never prioritize escape over hygiene. I think I have a few minutes.”

Damn him, he was right.

Jim scrubbed himself thoroughly, until every trace of scent--his own or that of the intruding alpha--was gone. Sebastian hadn’t returned by the time he was done, so he curled up naked in Sebastian’s bed. It smelled like him.


	9. Chapter 9

It was hours before Sebastian returned.

Awake and alert the moment his alpha entered the room, Jim scanned him for clues on what had taken so long. He had killed someone. Interesting.

Jim had slept for longer than he intended, and it was past midnight. He could have escaped, but then what? He needed a new goal, and a new plan. He could tolerate Sebastian for another day or two while he worked that out.

Sebastian flopped into bed half on top of him, snuggling and rubbing against him, teeth leaving marks on Jim’s neck and shoulders. “I need you to smell like me,” he said, nuzzling possessively.

“I was fine with smelling like myself,” Jim grumped, but he relaxed and let Sebastian deal with his base urges. “Who did you kill?”

With a laugh, Sebastian lifted his hips, placing him on all fours. “It’s amazing that you can do that. I killed Lestrade.”

“I thought you might.” Spreading his legs a little wider for him, Jim was rewarded when Sebastian reached under him and gave his dick a firm grope. “Ohh,” he moaned, arching his back and presenting himself out of instinct. “Tell me about it.”

“Nothing special,” Sebastian said, pushing himself in to the hilt with a little groan of satisfaction. “Mine.”

 _Yes. This. My Sebastian._ “Tell me how he died.”

“Yes, fine,” Sebastian said, winding his arms around Jim’s back as he thrust into him, in between possessive growls. “I cut off his cock, and when I got bored of watching him twitch I severed his spine.”

“Such a romantic.” Jim couldn’t help the moans coming out of his mouth, as much as he hated himself for it.

“You’re loud today,” Sebastian teased, his grip tight on his omega because he was afraid to lose him again.

Gasping as Sebastian’s clinginess forced his back to arch and the angle between them to change, Jim shuddered beneath him, feeling the beginning of the knot pushing into him. “Piss off.”

That just made Sebastian laugh, lifting up and grabbing Jim’s hips to fuck him harder, making him gasp and yelp with every thrust until they were knotted together. Pushing them onto their sides and curling up behind him, Sebastian nuzzled affectionately at his shoulder. “Mine.”

“You know you can’t keep me, Moran. I was made to rule, and that means a hell of a lot more to me than my fondness for a disobedient pet who doesn’t know his place.”

“You’re fond of me now? I’m touched. So figure something out where you can have everything.”

“What are you, five? You don’t get everything you want. Even I don’t get everything I want. Grow up, Tiger.”

There was some kind of yelling at the gate of Sebastian’s home. Jim felt his blood run cold. “You didn’t cover your tracks.”

“I may have made more of a mess than intended,” Sebastian said, lazily kissing Jim’s shoulder.

“You ignorant, clumsy _brute._ You didn’t cover your tracks.”

“I was angry.” They could hear the sound of a door breaking, and Sebastian grumbled. He pulled out with a pop, knot still large enough that it _hurt_. “You got a plan?”

“No, I don’t have a plan, I thought you were smart enough to _cover your tracks._ ”

“You’ll work something out,” Sebastian said, getting to his feet and pulling on a pair of trousers.

Jim snarled. “You are making an awful lot of messes for me to clean up, Tiger.”

Leaning over to kiss him, Sebastian pulled him out of bed. “Get dressed,” he suggested. He waited for the soldiers to break down his door, but put his hands up innocently as they entered.

“Not pleased, Moran,” Jim said, as the soldiers swarmed into the room, cuffing them both and leading them away separately.

“Where am I going?” Jim asked, once he had been bundled into a transport. They hadn’t thought to gag him, and he planned to take advantage of that until they did.

“A farm,” one of his guards said, and got smacked by one of the others. “Don’t talk to him.”

“And what, pray tell, is a farm?”

They didn’t answer, but he found out soon enough. It was a breeding facility, for unwanted or dangerous omegas to produce soldiers for the war.

Pride damaged to the core, Jim was hosed down, dragged from place to place, and finally subjected to a series of highly barbaric medical tests. Did they not have medical technology in this ignorant country?

“James Moriarty, is that right?” The nurse asked.

“Richard Brook. They mixed up the paperwork.” He scanned the room, spotting a tiny flashing red light on one of the medical machines, and just like that, he had a plan. “Did you know that machine is malfunctioning?”

“Hm?” The nurse turned to look at it. “Oh, it’s just a bit finicky sometimes.”

“That little red light,” Jim pointed. “Don’t you know what that means?”

“No?”

“Don’t worry.” He grinned. “I can fix it.”


	10. Chapter 10

Sebastian spent two weeks rotting in prison before the riots started.

The powers that be seemed content to leave him there, but he was fed every day (however awful the food) and had enough room in his cell to do exercises, so he couldn’t complain. The only thing he lacked was knowledge of Jim’s fate.

As the omega emperor, he could be anything from a political prisoner, an exchangeable hostage, a trophy for some high-ranking alpha, or--worst--a number in one of the Naxian breeding farms. None of the options were pleasant, but they would almost inevitably underestimate Jim and suffer for it.

He didn’t know what the riots were about, when they started. There were crowds outside the prison, some of them carrying signs, but from the awkward angle of Sebastian’s tiny cell window, he couldn’t gather any information about the size of the crowd or the words on the signs.

The prison guards answered none of his questions, and Sebastian’s slowly-forming plan to escape was stymied by the high security. He had the initial concept for an escape, though. If they left him here for another month, he would have a plan.

But when they finally came to release him, things got weird.

Sebastian rose to his feet when the cell door opened, ready for anything. Except that one of the men who came with the guards was a high-ranking general in the army, and he knelt before Sebastian.

Baffled, Sebastian stared. “I’ve missed something.”

“I’m here to release you,” the general said, beckoning him forward. The guards dropped back behind them as an honor guard. “You won’t have heard the recent news--John Watson and his omega, Sherlock, were found guilty of corruption and conspiracy, including the slander of your name.”

_Corruption and conspiracy?_

_Slander?_

Sebastian wisely kept his mouth shut, nodding as if all of this was normal and expected, when internally he was reeling.

“There are several powerful alphas vying for the throne, but several of them are implicated in the crimes, and your name has the popular backing.”

“My name?”

“The Hero of Naxos, who single-handedly brought the Delian empire to its knees. Apparently there are even talks of Delian surrender, but Delos is only willing to negotiate with you.”

“With _me_?”

Moriarty. Moriarty did this. That brilliant, insane, psychotic man. Sebastian had no idea what the endgame was, but he might as well play along. He had told Moriarty to work something out, after all. Looks like he did.

“If you make a claim on the throne, the military is prepared to back you. As I said, you are the popular choice.”

Sebastian grinned. “I’m flattered. Let’s go get me a crown.”

The coup took mere hours before Sebastian was in the castle, almost uncontested. Things fell easily into place. Everything Sebastian reached for was ready to be grasped, already set up just where he needed it to be. The only remaining question was about Jim’s location.

It was several days before he got an answer to that. He got a message that the management of a nearby breeding farm wished to speak to him, which he almost disregarded until he heard the name.

Richard Brook.

At that, he dropped everything and went.

Only lightly guarded, he left his guards in the atrium as he was led down a depressing cinder block corridor to an ugly office room, where Jim was lounging in an office chair like it was a throne.

“Three weeks,” Sebastian said, shutting the door so that they were alone. “You did all this is just over three weeks.”

“I’m a _genius_ ,” Jim drawled.

“You’re incredible,” Sebastian said, heartfelt. He strolled over, hands in pockets, to lean back against the table in front of Jim. “ _How?_ ”

“Oh, simple enough. Taking over this stupid facility took me two days, and after that it was just a matter of planting the right rumors in the right places. Talk will get you anywhere, Sebastian.”

“And now?”

“Now, I rule Naxos in your name, with you at my side. If that’s acceptable to you, Tiger.”

Sebastian grinned. “Sounds fun. Do I get to fuck you?”

A smirk quirked up one side of Jim’s lips. “Oh, why not.”

“Then yes. That sounds acceptable.”

“Come on,” Jim said, pushing up out of his chair and leaning up against Sebastian to kiss him. “Take me back to your palace as your prize. The Delian emperor, that should solidify your claim nicely.”

“Yes,” Sebastian agreed, holding him in place for a minute so that he could kiss him properly, having missed him sorely.

“Don’t you go into heat in about a week?” Sebastian asked, when the kiss finally broke.

“Yes. So it’s a good thing I work fast.” Jim tugged at him, impatient to leave. “Come on, tiger. I hate this place. Take me somewhere opulent.”

“Opulent,” Sebastian teased, trailing along after him. They stopped at the door to snap a leash on the--long since deactivated--collar Jim was wearing, and the attitude of both changed on the other side, behaving as though Sebastian was in charge, although they both knew that the reverse was true.

Once they were at the Naxian palace, Jim took over, guiding Sebastian on what needed to happen to cement their hold on power and trusting him to get it done. Absolutely happy with having Jim and freedom both, in addition to substantial power, Sebastian obeyed.

When he finally got his Jim alone, in their new royal chambers, Sebastian pushed him up against the nearest wall and kissed him briefly, grinning wide “This is amazing. All of this. It’s brilliant.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, Sebastian.” Jim wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Don’t be sappy.”

“Fine,” Sebastian laughed, hauling Jim’s shirt over his head and tossing it aside, quickly followed by his own shirt. “How about I fuck you, instead?”

“If we must.”

“Don’t act coy,” Sebastian smirked, slipping his hand down the back of Jim’s trousers and rubbing a finger against his cleft. “You’re already soaked. And if you didn’t want this, you would have masterminded some other situation. You want to be fucked, and I am glad to oblige.”

“It’s very rude of you to try and make me admit it,” Jim complained, but he wiggled out of his trousers and set about getting Sebastian out of his.

“Blow me,” Sebastian ordered.

“I will bite your dick off if you try, Moran,” Jim said, which made Sebastian laugh and pick him up. His legs wound immediately around Sebastian’s hips as his lover pushed him up against the wall. “One of these days I will attempt to teach you _foreplay_ ,” he said, but he still squirmed and gasped pleasantly when Sebastian guided his cock up and nudged the head of it inside.

“Boring,” Sebastian smirked, letting Jim drop a few inches onto his cock and enjoying the reflexive yelp as he grabbed at Sebastian’s shoulders.

“You sadistic fuck.” Jim panted, aching as his body tried to adjust to the invasion.

“You masochistic whore,” Sebastian countered, pressing the rest of the way in and holding him there so that they could kiss.

“I hate you.”

“You’re sweet.” Grip steady on Jim’s thighs, keeping him pinned easily against the wall, Sebastian fucked lazily into him, kissing and nuzzling in between the insults. Jim was so pliable today, warm and almost sweet as his arms wrapped around Sebastian’s shoulders, at least until he bit down on Sebastian’s neck, hard enough to leave a mark.

“Wanted to be an alpha?” Sebastian teased, until Jim’s lips closed over the spot and suckled hard, turning the bite into a full-fledged bruise and making Sebastian arch and moan. “Ohh. Yes. Okay. Good,” Sebastian panted, suddenly okay with Jim leaving all the marks he pleased as long as he kept that up.

He fucked Jim into the wall until he knotted, spurting come into him and dropping his head against Jim’s shoulder, shuddering. When they’d both stopped shaking, he changed his grip and carried Jim over to the bed, laying back on it with Jim straddling him and grinning as he watched his partner squirm, getting them both to a second orgasm from the squirming alone.

“Fuck, Jim,” he purred, lazy and happy, watching Jim shiver. “Do I really get to keep this?”

“If you don’t fuck it up,” Jim said, leaning forward and resting his arms on Sebastian’s chest.

Grinning, Sebastian flipped them over, pressing Jim back into the bed and biting at his neck and shoulder. “Mine,” he growled.

“Yes,” Jim admitted, finally. “Yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Follow me ~ marlowe-tops.tumblr.com


End file.
